by John McNally
In the sick bay, Captain Kelly, trying to remember how to tie his bow tie, planned an acrobatic showpiece on crutches on behalf of the SAS.
In the master bedroom, Commander King tied his bow tie as if he had been born to it, which of course he had. He would make the annual address and take absolutely no part in any dancing, thank you very much. Unless Violet Allenby forces me to, he thought fearfully, as he saw her car pull up the drive.
Grandma parked up. She had the boys with her. Finn got out in a grump. She had made him wear a very old suit of Al’s that was clearly too big for him. Hudson got out in a purple velvet tuxedo he had made himself, and the pair of them walked towards the hall like a pair of freak-show rejects.
Santiago laughed at them from the fountain.
“Ha ha! Monkeys!”
He had found it difficult to cope when he’d first arrived at Hook Hall, but the formal fountain in the drive had caught his sense of wonder – the simple beauty, the play of water and light. Now, when he wasn’t being rehabilitated from a lifetime’s abuse and slavery, he was always to be found there.
DNA analysis had proved beyond doubt that Santiago, not the Primo, was the son of Kaparis. No one had told him yet. Maybe they never would.
The Primo, who had effortlessly embraced modernity, now shared a cottage in the grounds with him. The other Carrier children, back in their countries of origin, were all on a rehabilitation programme supervised by the G&T. Those Tyros who had been captured alive were under the care of Grandma in a secure institution a few miles north of Hook Hall. Progress was slow, but her work with Li Jun had proved that, once some kind of emotional contact had been made, she could rescue their humanity. “Normal teenagers feel everything and know nothing,” Grandma would say. “With Tyros, it’s the reverse.” Given time, no one doubted that she would achieve success.
Grandma hurried off to meet the “admin girls” (none under the age of fifty) so they could work on their Motown medley. Hudson went to exchange punches with Santiago at the fountain, while Finn went on into the hall. The caterers were setting up and the final decorations were being put in place.
Finn went in search of Al, but found his office empty. In the mess on his desk, Finn could see that Al had been studying his father’s notes – the same infamous papers that Kaparis had had copies of. Since their adventures in the mountains, the notes had become an obsession for many of the Hook Hall scientists. The “Time = Place” paradox had changed their understanding of everything—
How? Finn would ask, but Al would refuse to answer. “Not until I really get it.”
Wacawacawacawaca …
A helicopter was coming in to land on the airfield at the back of Hook Hall.
Finn ran round and, of course, there was Al waiting in the rotor wash as Delta and Carla Salazar arrived from the US. Delta stepped out first and wrapped herself round him. Yuk. Finn turned away. He’d never be able to cope with old people in love.
Carla clearly felt the same, getting away from them as fast as she could and greeting Finn with a high-five, a hug and an “Aren’t they disgusting?”
Carla looked well – amazing – but she was clearly still miserable. She’d found it more difficult than Finn to adjust, especially at high school. She was struggling to unlearn some of the things she’d experienced, and spent more time on Skype with Finn than she did with her old friends. Her stepmother was concerned, and there was talk of her spending a term at school in the UK.
“Hi, how’s it going? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I’m fine. Just grouchy from the flight … You look like a clown.”
“Thanks. Bring a prom dress?”
Carla indicated the bag over her shoulder, as if she was carrying something vile.
“No way are we dancing.”
“No way,” agreed Finn, as Delta and Al rocked up and Delta headlocked him hello. Then she and Carla left to find their rooms and get “fixed up” for the ball.
“No pressure,” said Al, “but if you don’t look absolutely perfect, we’re having you deported.”
As the day faded to evening, Al and Finn retreated to his office to find him a tie.
“Where the hell is it? I know there’s one here somewhere …” Al said and switched on the desk lights. Again, Finn saw his dad’s last words spread out in hieroglyphs of advanced physics.
“Over the summer, will you try and teach me what some of this means?” asked Finn.
“If I ever manage to understand it myself,” said Al.
“Don’t lie, because Stubbs virtually told me – you’ve started rebuilding the henge,” said Finn, skewering him.
“You know, Grandma wants you to have at least a year off from all this stuff,” was all Al could say in his defence.
“And you too! Does she know about the new henge?” said Finn.
“You’d better not breathe a word, you little …”
“Just as long as you tell me how far you’ve got,” said Finn.
Al looked across the papers, the accumulated mystery of it.
“Well, I can give it my best shot, but don’t expect firm answers as there’s a long way to go.”
“Fine,” shrugged Finn.
“Well, the ‘time equals place’ stuff throws open a whole load of questions. Basically, it means that all time is space – in the same way that all matter is energy.”
“Huh?”
Al smiled and tried to put it as simply as he could.
“Some people think the only way of explaining all the contradictions of physics and quantum physics is to assume that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, parallel realities, where all possibilities can exist. It’s a convenient idea and it gives us a way to explain away things like where all your mass went to when we shrunk you, say. In theory, you should have been nine millimetres tall and eight stones heavy, but your weight – your mass – disappeared proportionately. We think your dark mass, the mysterious stuff that makes up ninety per cent of everything in the universe, disappeared as you shrank; we think it went somewhere else. Where? Our best guess is that it slipped into one of these parallel dimensions.”
“Yeah, you said that before. I remember,” said Finn.
“Right. Now I think it went somewhere else in time,” said Al.
“In time?”
“Yes. If you assume time equals place, it changes everything. You start to think, not of an infinite number of parallel universes, but in terms of an infinite number of moments of future time (future because you can never go back in time), with every point in that future time relating to a place. We can then say your dark energy was pushed to a place and time in the future, and when you needed it back, you got it back again.”
“But hold on – you just said you can’t go back in time, so how could it come back?” said Finn.
“Exactly. You can’t go back in time, but maybe you can go back in time that hasn’t happened yet,” said Al, beaming.
Finn’s brain was hurting, but also hoping. He could tell when Al was excited about something big. “You think that’s where my dad might be?” Finn dared to ask. “Some place … in the future?”
Al laughed. “I do and I don’t. As yet, I can find no way to test all this. For now, let’s say it’s just a matter of faith.”
“Grandma will be happy,” said Finn.
“I think your father was only just beginning to understand this too. The notes aren’t at all clear. There seem to be seven places, or seven ancient cities, that somehow have a link to this, and a link to water, but how they tie in I have absolutely no idea.”
“Venice …” said Finn. “You used to go to Venice after he disappeared.”
“That’s right. He mentions this church in Venice – I went back time and time again, but I could find nothing. Frankly, most of this seven cities stuff doesn’t make any sense.”
“But you do think,” said Finn, trying to put it all together, “that there may be an infinity of possible moments – in which he may exist?
”
“Or not,” warned Al.
“And each moment relates to a place. A place in the real world?” said Finn.
“Yeah, all maybe just a fraction of a moment ahead of us, so we can never quite get there, or far in the distant future.”
“Wow,” said Finn.
“I know,” said Al, delighted as he always was by his nephew’s sense of scientific wonder.
Finn reached out into the space just ahead of him.
“So he could be just there … just in front of me …”
“He could. Or he could not. I have to admit we’ve got a hell of a way to go.”
“But in time …”
“In time – lie all the answers,” said Al, just as he found his tie – “Aha!” – and he held it up as proof of his assertion.
As night fell, the guests began to arrive, the music started to play, and Finn and the other teenagers gathered in their finery at the fountain. The Primo, courtesy of Commander King’s tailor, looked a million dollars and extremely distinguished in his dinner jacket. Tragically, he could not see Li Jun swathed in sleek blue silk beside him. Hudson was quite disturbed by it, and stood the other side of Finn and Santiago, who had been forced into a white shirt. Finally, Carla came out in a little black dress, scowling and glorious.
They all hung out together for a few more minutes before going in.
“So, I’ve spoken to my stepmom and she says she’ll look at us moving over for a year,” announced Carla.
“Yay!” said Hudson. “You are going to hate our school!”
“Well, nothing’s definite, and she’s bound to want to send me to some private place, but in the meantime, I can definitely stay here with Delta for the summer.”
“That’s great!” said Finn.
“What do you think we should do? We should all do something together,” said Carla.
“I have an idea,” said Finn innocently. “Let’s go travelling. I don’t know why, or even when exactly, but I do know where to start …”
In Venice, in the dead of night, just off the Grand Canal, a gondola pushed its way down the Rio de l’Alboro towards a tiny and quite ancient church.
Its passenger, incongruously alone, one eye concealed beneath a decorative eye-patch, typed a final instruction on his phone to his Scots architect, and pressed Send. Then he sat back, satisfied, justified.
From a nearby palazzo, Beethoven’s late string quartet in C sharp minor drifted out across the canal. He did not hear it, was not prompted to reflect on eternity as any normal mortal would have been, so full was he of his own thoughts.
Thoughts of himself. Only ever of himself. And of himself going on and on, for ever.
FOOTNOTES
PROLOGUE
1 A mathematical set with a pattern that repeats as it expands or, as in the case of the Boldklub equations, contracts.
2 Aged between twelve and seventeen, Tyros are the foot soldiers of Kaparis, secretly selected from care institutions across the world and indoctrinated to serve him.
ONE
3 The digestive systems of nano-humans can absorb only 10 per cent of normal food and water. Blood, however, being more refined, can be absorbed at nearer 25 per cent.
FIVE
4 Nano-radar sets, shrunk to detect super-dense nano-material. Limited in range.
NINE
5 Propellers with blades extended into a screw shape, usually used in pumps, etc. Especially efficient in viscous liquids.
6 Latin for “Let there be light.” First words of the Holy Bible.
7 Aka QED. Latin for “which was to be demonstrated”. A term used to show that something has been proved by reason and experiment – last word in science.
TWELVE
8 Latin for “reduction to the infinite”.
9 Special French marine commando force co-opted to the G&T following assault action in Operations Scarlatti and Forbidden City.
10 High Altitude Low Opening. A parachute technique used by special forces to avoid radar detection.
THIRTEEN
11 Aircraft specifically developed to take full advantage of power-to-mass ratios at nano-scale.
12 Reducing matter collapses the electromagnetic spectrum in such a way that nano radio transmissions cannot be picked up on macro radio receivers and vice versa. An nPhone is a tiny macrophone carried in a backpack with a keypad that allows texting on the regular phone network. It also allows constant tracking.
13 Short-range solid-fuel air-to-air missile, relying on infra-red homing for guidance.
FIFTEEN
14 French military medal awarded for heroic deeds in conflict.
SIXTEEN
15 Nickname for the Exploratory Spinal Loop Interconnect program.
SEVENTEEN
16 Low probability of intercept.
NINETEEN
17 Latin for “Let there be Kaparis”.
TWENTY
18 More precisely, take a right into the femoral artery, then turn left up the iliac artery, then left again up the descending aorta. As you approach the heart, take the third exit on the right and follow the subclavian artery for a short distance before taking another right into one of the vertebral arteries.
TWENTY-FOUR
19 LCA = liquid compressed air. Improved power-to-mass ratio at nano-scale allows more air to be stored in a standard tank than at macro level.
TWENTY-FIVE
20 A superorganism is a group of individual organisms that gather together to better ensure their survival (e.g. an ants’ nest, coral reef, human society). As a young scientist, Kaparis developed a theory that superorganisms worked to serve a few special individuals (such as himself). In 1993, in a lecture given in Cambridge, his theory was demolished by Finn’s father, Ethan Drake, who pointed out a simple mathematical error in the statistical method.
TWENTY-EIGHT
21 Blue – shorthand for the deoxygenated blood carried in the veins, to distinguish it from the red (oxygenated) blood, although in reality “blue” blood is a dull red.
THIRTY
22 [INFORMATION REDACTED] G&T order no. 22378/b
THIRTY-FIVE
23 A now-discredited psychiatric surgical procedure whereby most connections to the prefrontal cortex of the brain were severed.
Infinity Drake – aka Finn – is off on holiday with his mad scientist uncle when they are summoned to a crisis meeting. Scarlatti, a lethal bio-weapon – an über-wasp killing machine – has been released by a pitiless villain, with incalculable consequences for mankind.
UNLESS Uncle Al can shrink a military team to track down and kill the beast. But then disaster strikes – sabotage! Finn gets shrunk to 9mm and has to jump in a tiny Apache helicopter with three soldiers in a desperate race to destroy the beast that’s out there, very angry and many times their size …
Infinity Drake – Finn for short – is STILL only 9mm tall. But before his crazy scientist uncle can figure out a way to return him to his normal size, a new threat emerges on the other side of the world.
Supreme villain, Kaparis, plans to release an army of self-replicating nano-bots – a hardware virus that will give him total control of global communications.
Finn and his gang of bullet-sized heroes find themselves on a deadly mission: to stop the bot infection before it conquers mankind …
Nano-bots: prepare to be cut down to size.
Books by John McNally
The Infinity Drake series in reading order
THE SONS OF SCARLATTI
THE FORBIDDEN CITY
GIANT KILLER
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